I spent most of my life suffering. In anguish, twisting in the wind because my parents hadn't loved me, had hated me with fearsome effect. Going around like the hollow half shell of a walnut or an open hand, wanting that drop of sacred water that other people had been given and I had not. I could tell of things my parents did, true and terrible stories that people could hardly hear.

And it seemed to explain everything. I was an abuse survivor, feeling over and over the pain, and maybe if I screamed long enough or devotedly or honestly enough explored the past, I would be free of it and free to be happy. I spent many years in therapy, but all it did was to teach me to act differently. I still felt the same inside.

So it was mind-wrecking. In a nice way. When I found out - at 43!!! that I had allergies to gluten and many other foods. And that my past and my life and my personality were different once I stopped eating the foods I'd developed allergies to. The abuse was no longer so overwhelming.

So listen:  if you have an explanation for something; even if it explains things well, even if it satisfies your heart and it's embedded into your life as truth, that doesn't mean it's THE explanation. Life is bigger than our minds.

I was also sick for six weeks a year after I was 20. I would come down sick, like I had the flu, but I didn't have a fever. Sick in bed, sleeping. Or not in bed, but feeling like night had settled on my brain: my thoughts plodding along, one after another like prisoners marching. I would be so tired after walking across my apartment that I'd have to lie down. I stayed sick about a week. I went to doctors for 5 years looking for help, but found none. That heavy sickness went away after I quit the foods I'd become allergic to.

But several years later, I came down sick again, with a chronic bleary feeling. Mentally and physically, I had very little energy. It went on for years. It turned out to be an allergy to dogs even though my allergy testing had gradually become negative, including for dogs!

From the time I was 20, I had adrenaline-like reactions to carbohydrates, and I would get hunger pangs from eating certain foods. That went away in 2005, after I'd eliminated more foods I was allergic to.

My knee got injured in a skiing accident in 1987, and I could only run a little, uphill, every other day. Otherwise my knee would hurt afterwards. Once I went to a park with my dog. I had a great time, running up hills for hours ... With a feeling of Whee! Then I went home and my knee hurt for a Month. After the elimination diet in 2005, I was able to run every day, as far as I wanted to, without my knee hurting.

Whatever is going on with me? - why do I have so many, and somewhat mysterious health problems? My best guess is that I inherited autoimmune tendencies (Hashimoto's, celiac disease) from my father and allergies from my mother, likely aggravated by the effects of childhood trauma, which increases people's levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines.

In my search for health, I tried to eat very healthy and although it didn't make me well, I think those ideas are good.